The Democracy Group

Around the world, religion is being used to fuel "us vs. them" narratives and undermine the foundations of democracy. This week, we dive into what this means and how people of faith can chart a different path forward. Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy highlights the use of religious identity to fuel the rise of illiberal, nationalist, and populist democracy.  It examines the...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question , Julia, Lee, and James consider what American politics will look like in 2022. Is American democracy in decline? What do we mean by democracy? Do Americans focus too much on elections and not enough on what happens in-between elections? What will come out of Congress over the coming year? Do Americans want major policy change to happen? And what will...

The anniversary of January 6th recentered concerns about U.S. democratic backsliding. Talk of election-related violence, insurrection, civil unrest, and irregular transitions has Americans asking where their democracy stands relative to those of other nations. Comparative political science has long seen U.S. trends as part of liberal democracy’s global problems.  Pippa Norris  joins the Science of...

One year after the January 6th assault on the U.S. Capitol, we take a close look at America's political divide with two journalists who covered the calamitous events on that day and the responses to them.  Our guests are Christa Case Bryant, Congressional correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, and Story Hinckley, the Monitor's National political correspondent. We discuss whether America...

In this episode, we talk with Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, JMU Health Sciences '05, about his experiences fighting for democracy on January 6, 2021. "These people were minutes, seconds, feet away from hanging the Vice President. Just sit with that," says Officer Dunn. He is speaking out for justice and accountability because, "People are trying to rewrite history right in front of us...Terro...

Jamelle Bouie and Nicole Hemmer return to the show this week for a special conversation looking back on the siege of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — and looking forward at the prospects for democracy in the post-Trump era. Both the country’s political leaders and the media, our guests say, have been reluctant to embrace a rhetoric of emergency to define the moment. And as lawmakers investigate...

For nearly 250 years, America has served as a test case for a social experiment that few could have ever conceived of — a constitutional federal republic. However, when one considers our history of massacres, slavery, civil war, and battles waged over voting rights, among other injustices, one can easily find reason to be doubtful of this experiment’s success. Given current levels of political pol...

In 2012, President Barack Obama signed into law the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, otherwise known as the STOCK Act. The intent was to ban insider trading from members of Congress — a subject that gained national media attention on both sides of the aisle in the months and years after the financial crisis. But the law did not do what it was supposed to. Weston unpacks the STOCK Act a...

Robert C. Lieberman is the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. Kenneth M. Roberts is the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government and Binenkorb Director of Latin American Studies at Cornell University. David A. Bateman is an associate professor in the Government Department at Cornell University. Robert and Kenneth (along with Suzanne Mettler) coedited...

We continue our Best of 2021 episodes with an  episode from the Democracy Works podcast, hosted by Jenna Spinelle, Christopher Beem, Michael Berkman.  Anne Applebaum is a staff writer at The Atlantic, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, and a senior fellow at The Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. She joined the McCourtney Institute for Democracy...

We continue our Best of 2021 episodes with an  episode from the the Future Hindsight podcast, hosted by Mila Atmos. Colin Jerolmack is an environmental sociologist and author of Up to Heaven and Down to Hell: Fracking, Freedom, and Community in an American Town . We discuss the public-private paradox and the tragedy of the commons, as well as the undemocratic aspects of American property rights. P...

We continue our Best of 2021 episodes with an  episode from the Democracy Matters podcast. For Constitution Day 2021 and to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the 26th Amendment to the United States Constitution, we talk with Carolyn Quilloin Coleman who started her activism work as a teenager protesting segregation in Savannah, Georgia. In April 1969, she organized the NAACP-sponsored Youth Mobi...

We continue our Best of 2021 episodes with an  episode from the How Do We Fix It? podcast, hosted by Richard Davies and Jim Meigs.  What's the greatest crisis facing America today? — Racism and hate crimes, exploding government debt, climate change, or the mess at the border? It may be none of these.  America and many other countries are trapped in  high conflict . Both sides are paralyzed by fear...

We continue our Best of 2021 episodes with an  episode from the Our Body Politic podcast, hosted by Farai Chideya. Farai Chideya and her guests dissect political news across the country, from the Senate races in Georgia to the violence in our nation’s capital. And we welcome new contributor and legal analyst Tiffany Jeffers. Impact investor Nathalie Molina Niño takes on the exclusion of women of c...

We continue our Best of 2021 episodes with an  episode from the Democracy Paradox podcast, hosted by Justin Kempf. A full transcript is available at www.democracyparadox.com or a brief primer on Mexican politics here . Guillermo Trejo is an Associate Professor at the University of Notre Dame. Sandra Ley is an Assistant Professor at CIDE’s Political Studies Division in Mexico City. They are the aut...

We continue our Best of 2021 episodes with an  episode from the 70 Million podcast, a documentary podcast about criminal justice reform from LWC Studios. This special roundtable of experts looks at how policing and incarceration practices are impacting COVID-19 rates in BIPOC communities around the country.  Because being jailed means an increased risk of getting COVID-19, those released might unk...

We continue our Best of 2021 episodes with an  episode from the The Bully Pulpit podcast, hosted by Bob Shrum and Mike Murphy Center Co-Directors Bob Shrum and Mike Murphy are joined by Linda Chavez, Pete Peterson, Theodore Johnson, and Ralph Neas to dive into the pros and cons of voting processes nationwide and explore common sense solutions. Featuring: Robert Shrum - Director, Center for the Pol...

We continue our Best of 2021 episodes with an episode from the Democracy in Danger podcast, with hosts Will Hitchcock and Siva Vaidhyanathan. Citizenship determines who is in and who is out, who has a voice in a democracy and who doesn’t. But for the one million young people who have grown up in the United States undocumented, feeling like they really belong here remains a dream deferred. This tim...

We continue our Best of 2021 episodes with an  episode from the Let's Find Common Ground podcast, hosted by Richard Davies & Ashley Milne-Tyte. What steps are needed to cause people to leave white supremacist and other hate groups of their own volition? In this deeply personal podcast episode, we explore the tactics and commitment needed to be successful in this work. Daryl Davis, an award-winning...

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This week we bring you an episode from  the To Build a Bridge Podcas t and our partners at the Bridge Alliance, an organization dedicated to providing resources to non profits involved in democracy reform. Being Right-of-Center in the era of social justice has become unpopular and suppressive. All too often, the right wing is labeled as prejudiced, hateful and uneducated conductors of national mis...

Host Farai Chideya talks with MacArthur Fellow, poet Reginald Dwayne Betts, about why we struggle to articulate exactly how we want to change the prison system in the U.S. OB-GYN Dr. Jamila Perritt explains why she dreams of exercising her medical practice without the interference of politics. Gwen Ifill Award winner Sisi Wei of OpenNews examines the transition from focusing on diversity in newsro...

Racial Injustice in the Climate Crisis Economic and racial injustices are at the center of the climate crisis. White communities have largely avoided things like polluting power plants and detrimental pipelines in their neighborhoods. Instead, communities of color have faced that burden. The willingness to sacrifice communities of color has made it easier for governments to tolerate climate chaos....

As world leaders discuss the planet's future at  COP26  in Glasgow, climate change remains a massive challenge and a source of fierce debate. While  two-thirds of Americans think  that the government should be doing more, it's tempting to throw our hands up in despair and think: "There's nothing I can do." Climate scientist  Katharine Hayhoe  begs to differ. She says the most important thing is to...

The challenges facing democracy around the world are daunting, especially as global conflicts and the COVID-19 pandemic have led to the erosion of civil liberties, the postponement of elections and the spread of disinformation campaigns. Despite global democratic erosion, Dr. Kevin Casas-Zamora, Secretary General of International IDEA , says “the explosion of civic activism globally in traditional...